The Chimpanzee News

There's been good news and bad news about our nearest relatives since Debbie Cox appeared on the Science Show last year.The good news is that UNEP's Great Ape Survival Program.The bad news is that the use of wood for fuel and rapid population growth is further depriving the chimpanzees of habitat.A new forest area has been found, away from people and perfect for a sanctuary, but money is desperately needed to bring this about. Around 1,000 endangered chimps are depending on us.

Transcript

Debbie Cox: The gorillas are in a much easier situation to manage than what the chimps are, because the gorillas are only found in two forests in Uganda and all of the population is found inside protected areas. Whereas the chimps are found in 22 forests and a substantial population is actually outside of protected areas and these forests are of course being degraded rapidly. We've found out through satellite imagery that in Uganda alone in the last 10 years we've lost over 800 square kilometres of forests. Now that equates to 800 chimps: in Uganda, our population density is at least one chimp per square kilometre in the forest, so that means that we know we've lost in 10 years 800 chimps.

So this is, you know, a big concern to us, and it's a hard one to fight against because this is forest outside of protected areas and you've got a population that's rising by 2.9% per year. We just reached 24 million people and they're estimating that it's going to be 40 million people by the year 2035.

Robyn Williams: That's in Uganda?

Debbie Cox: In Uganda, yeah, it's a rapid population increase. Other countries in Africa are not seeing as big an increase in human populations but Uganda is one of the highest, and that's a big concern for us. We've got over 95% of the population still relying on fuel wood to cook, so those diminishing forests, where are these people going to go for fuel wood - they are going to start targeting the protected areas in the next ten years, because they're estimating that in ten years we won't have any forest left outside protected areas, it'll be all gone.

Robyn Williams: You often come here and you depress me. Apart from your master plan is there good news? Have they diminished the bush meat trade?

Debbie Cox: We have a lot more control of the bush meat trade I think in Uganda now than what we did. Mainly because one, people acknowledged it. The authorities up until a year ago were still saying we don't have a problem in Uganda, and it's like well yes, you do have a problem - our research is showing you do have a problem. And because of that they've then come on board to help us with our snare removal programs.

Robyn Williams: That's the snares to catch the chimps.

Debbie Cox: Yeah, well they're actually set to catch other animals not chimps. Chimps are not a target species in Uganda as opposed to other countries. They're mainly after antelope and bush pigs but chimps are getting caught in them. And we're lucky in Uganda in the fact that basically, it's the culture of Ugandans that they don't eat great apes, they recognise them as ancestors and that they are a protected species and they've acknowledged that for a long time, so they don't really go after them. The only conflict that we're finding between Ugandans and chimps and gorillas is crop raiding. But with the chimp [problem] what we've found is that when we actually went to the villages and showed them photographs of the chimps caught in these snares they were upset, they didn't even know that that's what was happening when they set their snares. So just by doing awareness programs we were able to get a message out to the Ugandans and we're seeing them - not stop hunting, but they're not using wire now, they're going back to using twine and of course the chimps at least can get out of twine but they can't get out of the wire.

Robyn Williams: That is a relief, goodwill from Ugandans. But your own special skill has been how to look after the orphans, in other words the number of young chimps who've lost their parents, lost their mothers, you've taken them to sanctuaries. Have you learned much more about ways in which you can in fact bring up baby effectively?

Debbie Cox: I think there are two components to that. One is bringing them up to be normal chimps and the other is what can we do afterwards. I mean, none of us want to just have chimps in sanctuaries for the rest of their lives, I mean, what is the point really at the end of the day, all we're going to do is watch a species, our closest living relative go into extinction living on islands or living in sanctuaries all over Africa. So part of it is that you need to bring them up in a way that they are normal chimps and could survive back in the wild if given the opportunity to go back to the wild. And that's a lot of hard work. I normally, if I have an orphan come in to me, it takes two to three people to look after one infant because it's got to be 24 hours a day care. I insist that they have to have contact the whole time and you basically have to look after them as a chimp mother does, which of course is much more patient than a human mother, much more indulgent I think than what human mothers are. And so it's hard work for a human to actually take on that role, and most of the volunteers when they come and help me do that are quite shocked and tired of course by the end of it all and that whole thing of, oh this is cute, this is great, wears off after about a week, when you can't even go to the toilet without something clinging on to you.

Robyn Williams: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and on, and on.

Debbie Cox: Yes, exactly and that's why we have to have three or four people because you have to give people a break, they just can't do it full time and so it's worked very well. After the quarantine period, which is 3 months, we then integrate them into the youngest group, and normally people are quite shocked that I can do that in a day. I can take them from being with human care givers 24 hours a day and in one day put them in with chimps and they go very, very well in that situation. And part of it is because they've been given all of this security for three months. So we've taken them from either physically or emotionally being deprived and in poor state, bringing them back to a normal healthy state and then putting them back where they belong, which is with other chimps.

We had one young chimp this last year, her name in the local language meant lost one. She was unique because she wasn't caught for the pet trade, her mother had been killed for crop raiding and she had gotten caught in the snare and the farmers just left her in the forest but they informed the ranger that she was there. So he went and collected her and brought her in and she was an older chimp, she was about three and a half, four years of age, that's quite old to be coming out of the forest and she was so depressed it took us about two and a half months to get her to turn around. She would just lie there looking at you with this blank stare, it took us a long time to get her to eat food properly and she wanted no affection, no contact with us at all, she just wanted her distance. She was a hard one to bring around and eventually it was actually a gentleman from Australia, a volunteer who came over, it was his patience that finally brought her around, and part of it was that he took on being a chimp. So he would take her up and climb into trees and make nests in the trees and different things like that, and then finally she came around to wanting affection, which of course is very important for chimps, you know, having physical contact and having been volatile in their emotions, you know they're up and down and they're running around and things like that instead of sitting there, which is what she would do. It was very depressing to watch her, everybody who came saw it straight away that there was something wrong and it was so nice to finally see her laughing, and playing, and playing with the other chimps and wanting to have interest in life again.

Robyn Williams: So, she's OK today?

Debbie Cox: Yeah, well of course the first day we took her out to the island and introduced her to the other chimps she was so happy and she instantly attached herself to the adult females and insist that they carry her around. And of course the human care givers go through a traumatic time as well, because this chimp has been totally dependent on you for three months, you think there's loyalty there but of course as soon as they're with their own kind that loyalty is out the door and they want to be with other chimps.

Robyn Williams: Good on them.

Debbie Cox: You've then got to do a whole counselling process with the human care givers to sort of get them over the trauma of the fact that this infant has now totally abandoned you and has no interest in you anymore.

Robyn Williams: Well, you said before that Uganda is a kind of better place to do this sort of thing there; not so much in the way of wars or bribery and corruption and all the rest. But with your new job, to look Pan African across the continent and beyond, how are you going to get the other countries to work with you effectively?

Debbie Cox: We have already established a Pan African Sanctuary Alliance so we have 17 sanctuaries in 12 different African countries working together. And one of the exciting things about this is the fact that in Uganda we can't put chimps back in the wild, we don't have any forest to put them back; it's not that they couldn't go back it's just that we don't have anywhere to put them. But in other countries in West Africa we do and the Jane Goodall Institute in the Congo, we have the largest sanctuary there. At the moment, I think we have about 115 chimps being cared for and they're coming in like, 20 a year, it's just phenomenal when you think about the numbers that are coming in. I think Africa-wide we're increasing by at least 100 chimps a year coming into the sanctuaries with the knowledge that there's at least another 1000 out there that should be in the sanctuaries. And so you sometimes think, oh my God, you know, where are we going, what are we going to do. But we've had researchers; there was a guy that did an incredible journey of crossing the Congo in what we call a transect, so he went on foot from one side to the other and in doing that he found places that nobody's been to before and he's found us a site that we believe is perfect for releasing chimps back in the wild. There are no humans around, there are no wild chimpanzees now, it's in a perfect location and the forest is perfect for chimps. So we're hoping in the next three years to develop a release program where we will take all of these chimps back and put them back into the wild, and I think that's what I'm looking forward to in the next three years: working towards that and actually taking chimps and putting them back where they belong.

Robyn Williams: And all you need is three million bucks to do so, I suppose?

Debbie Cox: I think it will be three million or more, because the logistics alone...

Robyn Williams: Yes, I can imagine.

Debbie Cox: ...of doing it are going to be a lot.

Robyn Williams: Well, we'll put your contacts on the Science Show web site so people can get in touch and who knows, the odd couple of million might come from it - but it's a long way from Dubbo, isn't it?

Debbie Cox: It is, it is. The climate isn't so much [different] though we don't get the cold winters of course; in equatorial Africa it's summer all year round. You know, we are at 1200 metres above sea level in Entebbe, so it's actually very pleasant, I think it's beautiful, 23 to 27 degrees every day, it's perfect. I mean, I'm telling you it's God's country there.